Peter Gow, Trying to Further Education and Educators

Archive for the teachers Category

The Original Disruptor: A Cautionary Reflection on DEAD POETS SOCIETY

The tragic death of Robin Williams has moved us all, no matter what our special memories of his oeuvre might be: Mork, Adrian Cronauer, Peter Pan, or even John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt in one of my favorite films, To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar. For […]

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Twitter as the New Sampler, and Reflections on Tweets of Wisdom

Twitter as the New Sampler, and Reflections on Tweets of Wisdom

In some ways my summer Twitter feed is an extension of the visits to historic sites that my antiquarian family (first with my parents, later with my children) has been making all of my life. On some wall of every Colonial or 19th-century or early 20th-century house […]

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A Letter to New Teachers

Note: This post originally appeared here in July of 2011. It has proved to be both popular and durable, and as the 2014-15 2015-16 school year approaches, it seems appropriate to re-post it—PG If it hasn’t already, within a very few weeks school will be starting, and […]

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Paying It Forward: Further Thoughts on Why We (or at least some of us may) Teach

In my last post I suggested that a powerful motivation for some teachers seems to have been a desire to “correct” the teaching that they themselves experienced. I probably implied, without meaning to, that this is a sole impetus for those “restitutional” teachers, as if they were […]

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MY COUSINS’ SCHOOL

My cousins’ school in western Connecticut is in the news. The younger generation has grown and moved on, but their mother—a teacher and counselor, author of a book on grief—lives in town, a few blocks from the school. I haven’t heard from any of them, but their […]

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373 CRITICAL INNOVATIONS THAT NO COMPETENT TEACHER CAN AFFORD TO IGNORE—INNOVATION AND ITS AUDIENCES (Part 2 of 3)

Does the first part of this headline sound familiar? How many similar headlines have you read, or had tweeted to you? I see about a dozen a day, sometimes bouncing around my PLNosphere like an asteroid field. I admit that sometimes I bite—usually when the number is […]

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Buzzwords, Beehives, and School Leadership

Global – Interdisciplinary – Green – Technology-mediated – Multicultural – Design-thinkingWhat do these have in common? They’re all buzzwords that have been hovering and swooping around independent schools like a persistent swarm of bees for the past couple of decades. Some are older, comfortably familiar, while others […]

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In Memoriam–David W. Gow

My father’s school is a bit subdued today, as the former head, my father, died this morning. It’s a lovely, green campus, with some imposing brick edifices and a couple of the original converted farm buildings that still do good service. Despite its location in prime Snow […]

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ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF TRADITIONAL LANDS

I here affirm that the offices from which I work are situated on lands that have a very long and continuing history as a locus of residence, livelihood, traditional expression, and exchange by the Massachusett, Wampanoag, Abenaki, Mohawk, Wabanaki, Hohokam, O’odam, Salt River Pima, and Maricopa people. The servers for this website are situated on Ute and Goshute land. We make this acknowledgment to remind ourselves, our educational partners, and our friends of our shared obligation to acknowledge and work toward righting the inequities and injustices that have alienated indigenous peoples from the full occupation and utilization of these spaces.